JW Files Suit For ‘Refugee Travel Loans’ Information
Tightening our immigration and refugee programs is a matter of national security (despite what some out-of-control judges may think), and it is also a matter of cost.In
this regard, we have filed a lawsuit against the State Department for
records on the number of “Refugee Travel Loans” issued by State’s Bureau
for Population, Refugees, and Migration to the United Nation’s
International Organization for Migration from 2010 to the present.
We are also seeking the number of loans defaulted upon and the amount of
money written off on each defaulted loan. We filed the suit on January
24, 2017, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:17-cv-00157)).Judicial
Watch filed the suit after the State Department failed to respond to a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on February 5, 2016, seeking
the following:

All records reflecting the number of Refugee Travel Loans furnished by
the State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration
(PRM) to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) per year;
the number of travel loans that are defaulted upon per year; and the
amount of money written off per defaulted loan.

The
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provides funding for aid
and relief work abroad and the bureau’s admissions office handles
settling refugees in the United States. According to the agency’s website,
it spent nearly $545 million “to provide new beginnings to the world’s
most vulnerable refugees” in 2016 and more than $2.8 billion to
“humanitarian assistance overseas.” It provided $103 million directly to
the UN’s International Organization for Migration.The International Organization for Migration, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, has an annual budget of $1.4 billion
and (as of 2014) a staff of 9,000 throughout the world. According to the International Organization for Migration website,
the organization provides interest-free loans “furnished by the
Department of State” to “all refugees arriving in the United States:”

All
refugees arriving in the United States are offered interest-free travel
loans by IOM. Refugees who accept these travel loans are required to
sign a promissory note prior to departure, committing themselves to
repayment of the debt within 46 months after arrival in the United States.
IOM arranges for refugee travel using funds furnished by the Department
of State, and is mandated to subsequently effect collections on behalf
of the Department of State. Repayments made by refugees toward their
loans are returned to the Department of State for use by the Bureau of
Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) to defray the cost of future
refugee travel.

In July 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution making the International Organization for Migration part of the UN.Even The Washington Postreported that the nine resettlement agencies contracted
by the State Department to help resettle refugees in the U.S. actually
make more than $5 million a year in commissions on refugee debt
collection.
The State Department has stonewalled our request for refugee loan
information and associated taxpayer losses for a year – an unlawful
delay that screams “cover up.” This is an opportunity for the Trump
State Department to come clean and clean up this refugee welfare
program.And there’s a lot more for the Trump administration to clean up when it comes to “refugee loans.” In June 2016, Judicial Watch reported:

The U.S. government gives refugees on public assistance special “loans”
of up to $15,000 to start a business but fails to keep track of defaults
that could translate into huge losses for American taxpayers, records obtained
by Judicial Watch reveal. The cash is distributed through a program
called Microenterprise Development run by the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement.

***

HHS is not the only government agency doling out huge sums of cash for
this cause, though its focus on refugees appears to be unique. Others,
such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Labor (DOL) also
dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to various microenterprise
causes. For instance, in one recent year alone USAID spent $223 million
on microenterprise development activities, according to figures
released by the agency. The USDA also allocates large sums to provide
loans and grants to microenterprise development through a special “Rural Microloan Revolving Fund” and
the DOL regularly pours lots of money into various microenterprise
projects that are promoted as workforce investments in areas with high
rates of poverty.

So the debate about refugees is more than about keeping dangerous
refugees out, but there is also the matter of asking just how much it
costs to make politicians to feel good about themselves by using our tax
dollars to provide special assistance to these foreign nationals.

Mexican Drug Cartel Operating in U.S. Suburb More than 1,500 Miles from Border

President
Donald Trump made it clear during his campaign that one of the reasons
for building a wall along the Mexican border is to disrupt the flow of
heroin into the United States. This heroin is killing Americans in
record numbers, according to the Centers for Disease Control.The crisis isn’t limited to areas adjacent to the border; it has now spread to communities far beyond, as our Corruption Chronicles
blog reports this week:

Illustrating that the Mexican drug crisis is having a far-reaching
impact on the U.S., a heroin ring operated by a Mexican cartel was
recently busted in an American suburb more than 1,500 miles from the
southern border. In the last few years Judicial Watch has reported
extensively on the massive amounts of drugs—especially heroin—that get
smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican traffickers who later use street,
prison and outlaw motorcycle gangs to distribute them throughout the
country. Undoubtedly, these enterprises benefitted tremendously from the
Obama administration’s open border policies.
Now we have confirmation that these illicit drug operations have
penetrated areas far from the border. This case comes out of Rowan
County, North Carolina, where a local news report
reveals that authorities began targeting large-scale heroin
distribution in 2013. Last week three people with ties to a Mexican drug
cartel were arrested in the county. Large quantities of heroin,
handguns, a rifle, ammunition, numerous telephones, cash and drug
paraphernalia were confiscated by police. Authorities say the Mexican
heroin trafficking ring was based in the Charlotte-Matthews area and has
been supplying heroin to Rowan County for more than a decade. “Over the
past two months, investigators purchased large amounts of heroin from
two people working for this Mexican National Drug Trafficking
Organization,” the news report states.
This is hardly earth-shattering news. A number of federal audits have
documented the enormous amounts of drugs that annually enter the U.S.
through the porous southern border, even as Obama’s Homeland Security
Secretary famously proclaimed the region to be as secure as it’s ever
been. One report, published just a few months ago, referred to western
states as a “heroin transit zone”
because Mexican cartels move such large amounts of drugs through the
Southwest border. That government assessment disclosed that there at
least eight major Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in
the United States with the Sinaloa Cartel being the most active. Heroin
is the most popular drug and it’s entering the country through Mexico in
record numbers. From 2010 to 2015 heroin seizures in the Mexican border
region more than doubled from 1,016 kg to 2,524 kg, according to
government figures.
The trend mirrors the increase in overall seizures throughout the U.S.
as well. For instance, federal arrests and prosecutions of heroin
traffickers have skyrocketed with 6,353 heroin-related arrests in 2015.
Additionally, the number of individuals sentenced for heroin trafficking
offenses in federal courts has increased by almost 50%, the government
confirms. In 2015 the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) issued a report
disclosing that the majority of illegal drugs in the United States come
from Mexico and Mexican traffickers remain the greatest criminal threat
to the United States. They’re classified as Transitional Criminal
Organizations (TCOs) by the government and they’ve long smuggled in huge
quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.
A big part of the problem is that the drug trafficking is being
leveraged by corrupt public officials in the U.S., a years-long Judicial
Watch investigation has found. Undoubtedly, cartel violence is real but
truckloads of drugs are getting across the country because U.S.
officials at the municipal, state and federal level are turning a blind
eye or actively participating and cooperating with cartels. As part of
an ongoing probe, Judicial Watch has provided the Department of Justice
(DOJ) Inspector General and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck
Grassley with evidence, including the sworn testimony of law enforcement
officers, of this corruption and criminality in all levels of
government. Learn more about Judicial Watch’s probe here.

Do
not imagine that our porous border is a problem for someone else
because you don’t live there. The quadrupling of deaths from heroine
overdosing has occurred in every part of the country and among every race and age group. We have covered this extensively, as you can see here,
and we will not let up.

California Crony Corruption Costs Taxpayers

Americans
of almost every political stripe – liberal or conservative, Democrat or
Republican – hate the “revolving door,” which is the shuttling of
former government officials into private jobs where they use their
formerly official connections to enrich themselves.
This week, we released documents that the Washington revolving door
extends all the way to Sacramento, California, and back again. JW pried
loose records from
the California Legislature Joint Rules Committee revealing that the
legislature will pay former Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm
$25,000 a month for 40 hours of work each month for providing “legal
strategies regarding potential actions of the federal government that
may be of concern to the State of California.” The contract precludes
requiring the Holder firm to do any other litigation or advocacy work.
The records came in response to a January 9, 2017, Legislative Open Records Act request for:

All contracts between the California Legislature and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling.All
communications between the California Legislature and former U. S.
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling about the
Legislature’s retention of Holder and/or Covington and Burling.

On January 4, California legislative leaders announced that
they had hired Holder to assist them in anticipated federal challenges
to several state policies, including those on climate change and
immigration.In a statement,
Kevin de Leon, California Senate President Pro Tempore said,
“With the upcoming change in administrations, we expect that there will
be extraordinary challenges for California in the uncertain times
ahead.” The California attorney general, who represents the State’s
interest in court, already has a budget of $190 million. So, yes, taxpayers are being double-charged for lawyers they don’t need!
In the Covington contract provided to Judicial Watch, Holder’s firm
limited its activities to providing “legal strategies” and stipulated
that it would require a “new engagement letter” for any activities
beyond providing such advice:

We
are pleased to confirm that we will serve as Special Counsel to the
California State Senate and the California State Assembly (collectively
“the Legislature”) in helping the Legislature develop legal strategies
regarding potential actions of the federal government that may be of
concern to the State of California…
Should the Legislature wish to retain us to work on any particular
litigation or other matter or public policy advocacy work, that would
not fall within the scope of this undertaking and would require a new
engagement letter.

Holder
was one of Obama’s longest-serving and most crooked Cabinet members.
On June 28, 2012, he became the first U.S. Attorney General to be held
in contempt of Congress
on both civil and criminal grounds. The contempt charge came in connection with Holder’s refusal to turn over documents on Operation Fast and Furious,
the Obama administration’s gunwalking scandal. Judicial Watch has since exposed numerous atrocities associated with this scandal.
Under Holder the Justice Department dismissed its voting rights case against
the New Black Panther Party. The Justice Department originally filed
its lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party following an incident
that took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November 4,
2008. According to multiple witnesses, members of the New Black
Panthers blocked access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled
racial epithets. A video of the incident, showing a member of the New
Black Panther Party brandishing police-style baton weapon, was widely
distributed on the Internet.In March 2011, we sued the Holder Justice Department for records detailing its contacts with NAACP about the dismissal of the lawsuit.In 2013, the Holder Justice Department was caught spying on The Associated Press
by collecting months’ worth of phone records of reporters and editors. Fox News’ James Rosen was among those targeted by Holder’s Justice Department. Holder left the Justice Department in 2015 to rejoin Covington & Burling.So
you can see why many are outraged. California state legislators are
wasting tax dollars to bankroll another corrupt politician – Eric Holder
– under the pretense of attacking the Trump administration. This
expensive contract is crony corruption pure and simple.
The swamp of public corruption has taken over California.We aren’t finished with our investigation, so stay tuned.

Be Sure to Watch: ‘The Voter Fraud Crisis’

The
issue of voter fraud is now out in the open, and you will want to join
us for next week’s special panel titled “The Voter Fraud Crisis.” We’ll
be joined by a raft of experts: